Self-Love, Egoism and the Selfish Hypothesis

Analysis of one of the central debates at the dawn of the Enlightenment in Britain
Christian Maurer analyses and contextualises the key concepts and arguments in the debates on self-love in British eighteenth-century moral philosophy. He focuses on famous and lesser known authors including Shaftesbury, Bernard Mandeville, Francis Hutcheson, Joseph Butler, Archibald Campbell, David Hume and Adam Smith, putting them in a philosophical, theological and economic context.
Maurer distinguishes five conceptions of self-love and looks at their role within theories of human nature and morality while drawing attention to the heuristic limits of our contemporary notion of egoism. He compares central arguments concerning the selfish hypothesis and highlights the range of strategies to morally rehabilitate human nature and self-love before and during the Enlightenment.
Christian Maurer is SNSF Professor in Philosophy at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.